The first number is the principal quantum number (n) and the letter represents the value of l (angular momentum quantum number 1 s, 2 p, 3 d and 4 f) for the orbital, and the superscript number tells you how many electrons are in that orbital. Any opinions expressed on this website are entirely mine, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of my employers. Electron configurations have the format: 1s 2 2s 2 2p 6. All text and images on this website not specifically attributed to another source were created by me and I reserve all rights as to their use. Jeff Cruzan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Elements Hydrogen (211) Sodium (177) Oxygen (168) Copper (106). It's a more productive way, in my view, to build a functional memory of the elements. Before long you'll assimilate a lot more elements into your long-term memory and what gets stored there will make some logical sense.įor example, all of the noble gas elements (under He) are much more similar than different. If you know these elements, then you've got a framework on which to build a memory of the other elements in the group as you study chemistry. These are the elements at the top of each column (group), and they are generally representative of the other elements in the group. For atoms, the notation consists of a sequence of atomic subshell labels (e.g. I ask my students to memorize the first ten elements of the table: H, He, Li, Be, B, C, N, O, F and Ne. Notation Physicists and chemists use a standard notation to indicate the electron configurations of atoms and molecules.

Your chemistry teacher might disagree with me, so be careful here, but my view is this:

Na element orbital notation